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The Brotherhood of Billionaires
Lawrence Wittner
In recent decades, a growing similarity has developed between the Chinese and U.S. economic systems. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s talk of “socialism,” the rapidly-expanding Chinese economy has become increasingly capitalist, with the private sector accounting for about two-thirds of China’s Gross Domestic Product in 2021.
Not surprisingly, then, the two countries currently lead the rest of the world’s nations in their number of billionaires. This March, according to Forbes, the United States had 735 billionaires (worth a collective $4.5 trillion) and China had 562 (worth $2 trillion) out of a global total of 2,640.
The richest U.S. billionaire, as well as the wealthiest man in the world, is Elon Musk, who, as of November 2023, possessed a fortune estimated at $241 billion. Born to a wealthy South African family, Musk cofounded six companies, among them Tesla and SpaceX (whose Starships exploded this April and November), and recently purchased Twitter, turning it into a conduit for hate speech.
Well-known for his arrogant, incendiary, and antisemitic pronouncements, Musk presides over corporations that have faced lawsuits over civil and workers’ rights violations. This September the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionsued Tesla, charging racial discrimination and harassment of Black workers.
Jeff Bezos, the second richest American, with $168 billion in wealth, founded and long presided over the e-commerce giant Amazon, the second largest corporation in the United States, with $514 billion in revenue during 2022. He also owns the Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that produces rockets, one of which he flew into space for a joyride in 2021. Bezos modestly thanked “every Amazon employee” because “you guys paid for this”―a fact surely recognized by Amazon’s delivery drivers, timed so relentlessly on the job that they urinate in bottles while on the road.
Amazon also fought ferociously to block unionization of its employees and, though thousands of workers at Amazon’s massive Staten Island warehouse startled the nation by defiantly voting for a union, the company refused to recognize it. This May, Bezos and his glamorous fiancée set off on his three-masted sailing yacht, the largest in the world, blissfully touring Europe and holding an at-sea engagement party amid movie stars, royalty, and, of course, billionaires.
Larry Ellison, the third richest American, currently possesses $145 billion in wealth, based largely on his holdings in Oracle, a software giant. Dubbed the “nation’s most avid trophy-home buyer” by the Wall Street Journal, Ellison has purchased dozens of very expensive mansions and real estate properties. They include a 23-acre estate, modeled after a 16th-century Japanese imperial palace, that he reportedly spent $200 million to renovate, as well as 98 percent of Lanai, the sixth-largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, which he purchased for $300 million.
Ellison has owned many exotic cars, the twelfth-largest yacht in the world (built at a cost of $200 million), and several planes, and has had four wives and divorces. He has also sued San Jose, California over the local airport’s rule that prevented him from landing his private jet there in the middle of the night.
Today’s top three Chinese billionaires are Zhong Shanshan (bottled spring water manufacturer, $64 billion), Zhang Yiming (founder of tech giant ByteDance, $43 billion), and Colin Huang (e-commerce leader, $41 billion). Given China’s government-controlled communications media and sensitivity about the existence of fabulous wealth and extravagant lifestyles in this ostensibly socialist nation, public information about these and most other wealthy Chinese is far less available than for their U.S. counterparts. Even so, the lives of China’s billionaires have been revealed again and again to include luxurious mansions, private jets, collections of the world’s most expensive cars, jewelry, and art, and other glittering accoutrements of private privilege.
It’s certainly a different way of life from that of the people who produce their wealth. Although there has been substantial economic growth in China, the country is characterized by a high level of economic inequality. Chinese workers in manufacturingaverage only about $6 an hour, and life for many of them is precarious. Companies employ hundreds of millions of rural migrants, often on temporary contracts or hired informally, and this leaves them vulnerable to unpaid overtime work, sudden pay cuts, or layoffs.
Increasingly, factories have resorted to not paying workers, paying them late, or letting them go. Barred from forming independent unions, workers have nonetheless conducted a surge of strikes. Furthermore, the country’s safety net is minimal and, in rural regions, social security benefits are only about $27 a month. In 2020, China’s premier reported that 600 million Chinese had a monthly income of less than $150.
Much the same pattern exists in the United States. For decades, despite a rising GNP, income and wealth have grown more unequal and, as of 2018, the three wealthiest U.S. billionaires had combined fortunes exceeding the total wealth of half the American population. Today, real wages in the United States stand at roughly the same level as 40 years ago, with the federal minimum wage stuck at $7.25 per hour.
Almost 18 million Americans exist in what has been called “deep poverty”―defined as living on less than $6,380 a year for an individual or living on less than $13,100 a year for a family of four. Amid heightening inequality and declining membership, American unions are waging a fierce struggle for economic justice.
This prevalence of economic inequality reflects not only corporate priorities, but the enormous political influence billionaires exercise in both nations, either through their vast wealth or through direct personal control of government. Billionaire politicians like Donald Trump make appeals to the working class, but deliver tax breaks for the rich, just as billionaire rulers like Xi Jinping talk of “common prosperity,” but simultaneously promote China as “open for business.”
In the world they desired and did much to create, the billionaires of both countries have a lot more in common with each other than with their fellow citizens.
[Dr. Lawrence Wittner is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of ‘Confronting the Bomb’ (Stanford University Press.) Courtesy: CounterPunch.]
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In another article, ‘The US Government Has Abandoned the Nation’s Poor’, Liz Theoharis writes (extract):
Extreme economic inequality, characterized by a small class of the very wealthy and a broad base of poor and low-income people, is a fact of life nationwide. In September 2023, the wealth of America’s 748 billionaires rose to $5 trillion, $2.2 trillion more than in 2017, the year the Trump administration passed massive tax changes favoring the rich. [And at the same time] newest census figures released in September 2023 show: 41% of Americans were poor or low-income in 2022, up significantly since 2021, mainly because of the failure to extend and expand tested anti-poverty programs including the child tax credit, stimulus checks, Medicaid expansion and more.
In 2022, the official threshold for poverty was $13,590 per year for one person and $27,750 for a family of four — with about 38 million Americans falling below that threshold. That number alone should shock the conscience of a nation as wealthy and developed as ours. But the truth is that, from the beginning, the official poverty line has been based on an arbitrary and shallow understanding of human need.
Indeed, right above the 38 million people in official poverty, there are at least 95 million to 105 million living in a state of chronic economic precariousness, just one pay cut, health crisis, or eviction from economic ruin. In other words, today, the low-wage, laid-off, and locked out can’t easily be separated from people of every walk of life who are being economically downsized and dislocated. The old language of social science bears little resemblance to the reality we now face. When the economically “marginalized” are being discussed, it’s all too easy to imagine small bands of people living in the shadows along the edges of society. Unfortunately, the marginalized are now a near-majority of this country.
(Liz Theoharis is a theologian, ordained minister and anti-poverty activist. Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, she is the author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor. She teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Courtesy: TomDispatch, a web-based publication, founded and edited by Tom Engelhardt, aimed at providing “a regular antidote to the mainstream media”.)
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In an article published in CounterPunch, “A New Portrait of the World’s Wealth — and Wealthiest”, Sam Pizzigati writes (extract):
How can we comprehend — truly comprehend — how concentrated the wealth of our world has become? We could look at these wealthy through the eyes of those who measure just how concentrated our world’s wealth has become.
Matt Bruenig at the People’s Policy Project, has used the new Fed data to calculate the share of America’s wealth held by each decile — each 10 percent — of the nation’s households.
“Overall,” Bruenig concludes, America’s “wealth inequality remains quite high,” with the top 10 percent of households owning a whopping 73 percent of the nation’s wealth and the bottom half of U.S. households holding “just 2 percent of the nation’s wealth.”
[Sam Pizzigati writes on inequality for the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest book: ‘The Case for a Maximum Wage’ (Polity). Among his other books on maldistributed income and wealth: ‘The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970’ (Seven Stories Press). Courtesy: CounterPunch.]
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A Steelworker in China Writes About His Working Conditions
World Socialist Web Site
[The following is a letter sent to the World Socialist Web Site by a young steel worker outlining the shocking lack of basic safety conditions in his factory and asking that it be published.]
When I was interviewed for this job, a manager gave me and other prospective workers a tour around the factory. Then, she gave us 10 minutes to read the safety guidelines. This was the only safety training we received. She told us our base salary was only 3,000 RMB ($US412) a month, and any bonus would depend on the output of our plant.
Our contract was a piece of blank paper. The factory then wrote in their terms after we had already signed the paper. We are unable to see even a single clause of our contract.
On our second day, the factory asked new workers to watch how experienced workers operate and to assist them. Most jobs are extremely dangerous, and safety measures hardly exist.
While alloy steel rods heated to thousands of degrees rolled on their track, we need to perforate the rods and push them onto another track. A senior worker told me, there were times when hot steel rods fell from the track and crushed workers. However, the factory only symbolically added a few small fences along the track, which are hardly of any use. Workers still have to work by the tracks.
Discipline at the factory is extremely harsh. If a worker makes a mistake by accident, two to three days of wages are deducted. If a worker causes some damage to the factory, then the worker needs to pay extra. On paper, we are supposed to work eight hours a day. In reality, we are required to start work half an hour early. If the quota of the day is not met, we are compelled to work overtime. If you include the time taken to commute and to change into work clothing, we spend more than 10 hours at work every day.
My mentor was young but had already worked at this factory for years. He had a big scar on his right leg after being burned by a hot steel rod.
Before we start our work every day, we need to check if all equipment and instruments are functioning properly. To do this, we have to climb to the top of a furnace burning at a temperature of 1,300˚C (2372˚F) and enter the hole in the furnace where the temperature exceeds 55˚C (131˚F) to make sure the instruments there work.
On top of all this, I also have to open pipes filled with fluoride, a highly corrosive and toxic chemical, to check if enough fluoride is in there. The factory uses fluoride to make sure it meets environmental standards and to avoid fines. These pipes are kept open all the time because there are no properly sized caps. One can smell this toxic chemical meters away. I can not breathe near it and have to hold my breath whenever I check it.
No safety measures are taken for these daily checkups. All we have is a pair of thermal gloves and a helmet.
One job in the factory is to manage the conveyor belts and send billets of over 200 kilograms into the furnace. The conveyor belts are old, and the chains often fall off. Whenever the conveyor belts gets stuck, workers have to go to great lengths to pry these 200 kilogram billets loose to get the conveyor running again.
There are no lunch breaks, but luckily workers care for each other. Workers take turns to go get food so that we do not starve at work.
The factory is very humid and hot, probably over 40˚C (104˚F). Huge industrial grade fans are not able to blow away all that heat. The factory only provided some drinking water at the beginning of work. If you get thirsty in the middle of work, you have to pay for it. We have to drink more than three liters of water every day to prevent heat stroke.
Workers are very willing to help each other in their free time, but everyone needs time to rest as well. I’ve asked other workers about their thoughts on the working conditions. But they just said you have to get used to it. Workers’ interest in politics is not low at all.
When I discuss political issues with them, they are very interested in history. Unfortunately, I cannot have more in-depth discussion with them. They are reluctant to express their own views. Maybe because we have not bonded enough.
The factory is very good at using subtle maneuvers to break workers’ unity. For example, the management does not allow too many workers to get together and chat. They use fines and bonuses to divide and conquer. They deliberately give conflicting work arrangements to set workers against each other. While all this happen, the management stays in air-conditioned rooms.
Working under these dangerous conditions, almost every worker has a scar somewhere on their body. The factory cares nothing about so-called safe production. There are accidents every month, and the factory responds by imposing fines on workers.
These conditions are not particular to Chinese factories. Factories in Vietnam, India and Malaysia have similar conditions too. Workers around the world all endure inhuman treatment. This cannot simply be attributed to the crimes of this or that backward capitalist state. It is the global capitalist system that gives rise to these terrible conditions, and every imperialist and capitalist country is a link in the system. Only the proletariat revolution on the world scale can free the working class and the toiling mass from such oppression.
(Courtesy: World Socialist Web Site, the online publication of the International Committee of the Fourth International.)
